Panoramic images, or panoramas, can provide a more immersive viewing experience by providing a wider field of view, or aspect ratio, than standard images. Conventional panoramic images can be captured with special wide-angle or panoramic lenses. However, panoramic images may also be created by assembling or “stitching” together contiguous images taken from standard lenses to form a composite image. The proliferation of consumer image capture devices (e.g., digital cameras) and recent developments in image processing software have placed the ability to create high-resolution composite panoramic images in the hands of casual photographers. Moreover, image capture devices and software suitable for creating such panoramas are becoming common on mobile computing devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets).
Unfortunately, the non-standard aspect ratios associated with panoramic images often make viewing a full panoramic image impractical on a display with a traditional pixel aspect ratio. A full view of a panorama, for example, may make use of only a limited portion of available display area due to “letterboxing.” Moreover, a composite panorama may have a resolution greatly exceeding the native resolution of a display device, especially a display of a mobile computing device. Thus, a full view of a panoramic image may prevent finer details of the image from being visible. Accordingly, a user may instead opt to view a limited first portion of a panorama, and then pan or zoom to reveal other portions of the image in turn.
A known technique for gradually revealing an image by panning or zooming is known as the “Ken Burns Effect.” However, while the Ken Burns Effect may provide an aesthetically pleasing way to view a panoramic image, conventional implementations are limited in applying the technique to a composite image without consideration of the source images used to create the composite image.